If your call centre has high employee turnover, you could be losing an alarming amount of money. It is far more expensive to recruit new call agents than retain the ones already in place. Here are some tips for reducing employee turnover, and turning your agents into happy, motivated and high-quality members of staff.

1. Work on your training program

Get your agents motivated with a robust and thorough training program. Not only will it boost their expertise, it will give them confidence in their ability to do the job. The more you invest in them, the more valued they will feel and you will be rewarded with staff who will go the extra mile for you in return.

Without strong training, your staff may not be satisfied with their job because they lack the knowledge needed to carry out their work. It is essential that every new intake should be trained properly before putting them to work with customers.

2. Optimize your recruiting & hiring process

If you are serious about reducing staff turnover in your organization, it is important to get the best from your recruiting and hiring stage. This is where the whole process starts. Make sure you take time during the recruitment stage to find out will get the best out of your new employees. A thorough and professional hiring process will attract high-quality hopefuls for the positions. By choosing the best candidates and training them well, new staff members are more likely to stay with the organization for a longer period of time.

3. Have a good communication channel between employees and management

Employees often quit their jobs due to a lack of communication with people in management. When they face challenges they can feel it impossible to talk to their bosses about them, or perhaps aren’t aware of how to go about it. If it’s an ongoing problem, employees can leave out of frustration as they feel they are not listened to.

Try to be transparent in the way you operate, and create an open and honest channel for your employees to communicate with you. Employees can use it to bring problems to your attention, which not only reduces friction in the workplace but gives them a sense of belonging.

4. Promotion should be based on customers' satisfaction

The work ethic and productivity of your call agents should be the factors to consider when promoting them. Client satisfaction is a good way to determine this. Your call agents are responsible for dealing with customer enquiries and problems, so their promotion should be dependent on how well they fulfill these tasks.

5. Ensure that development programs are in place

This is another important aspect if you want to reduce employee turnover. Surveys have shown that the majority of employees who move from one organization to another, did so because they were not given the development opportunities they had been promised.

People do not enjoy stagnation. They like to learn, and enhance their skills through training and development. It is not always possible for call centre employees to afford classes on their own, so if you offer them opportunities they will be happy and satisfied at their jobs.

6. Recognize and reward employees for outstanding performance

To improve the work experience of your staff, it is important to put together a reward and recognition package. Make these packages high quality, compensate staff for their effort and reward them when they go beyond their assigned duties. By doing this, you motivate them to go above and beyond their past limits. This will help the company to move forward.

7. Coaching culture

A coaching culture is great to foster in your organisation. What do we mean by coaching culture? It means leaders and managers dropping their titles, and becoming coaches to their employees. Instead of simply issuing orders, they relate to their staff and understand their working environment. They give them advice on critical situations that will benefit both the company and the employees.

8. Empower call agents above answering calls

Call center agents have a wealth of experience, knowledge, and skills that are waiting to be harnessed. Empower them to use this knowledge to help move the organization to a higher level. You’ll not only grow the company, you’ll give the staff a sense of importance and value in moving the company forward, thus increasing retention rate. No employee would want to leave an organization where they are highly valued.

9. Focus on regulations that will make your employees responsible people

As an employer, there are rules and regulations you set in place to make your staff more accountable and efficient in their work. Expecting them to work when it is time for work, and giving them time off to relax is the way to get the best from your employees. This will not only make them more productive, but it will make them want to stay with the company because they are being given what they need.

10. Carry out agent engagement surveys

This is a practice that will help improve the engagement of agents and their retention rate. Use engagement surveys at regular intervals to monitor whether there is an improvement in agent engagement. But it’s not enough to simply carry out the survey - to make an impact, you must act on the outcome. It can be actively detrimental if you carry out a survey but fail to make any changes afterwards - it will seem as though you don’t care about improving agents performance, or work environment.

11. Conduct an exit interview

If you want to increase agent retention, you should carry out an exit interview for employees who want to leave. No company likes losing their employees, but a certain level of turnover is inevitable, and every organization should be ready for it. By making the employee exit formal, management can discover why agents are leaving and use the information to make amends if necessary, and to reduce future recurrence. Ask questions about why they are leaving - but if you think they will be uncomfortable in expressing themselves, let them put it in writing.

Employee turnover is inevitable to some extent, but there are ways to go about boosting retention rates. Losing large volumes of staff costs employers a huge amount of money in recruiting and managing replacements. Knowing how to remedy this will not only help your organization grow, but will improve your team and make them gain the experience to better fulfill their roles.

Implementing these tips will go a long way towards reducing call agent turnover, and improve the overall success of the organization.

Did a similar workaround help you reduce your employee turnover? Feel free to share them with us via the comments section.

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